


each day with you is a choice (I'll make it every time)

by theappleppielifestyle



Series: The True Ending [2]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:27:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5050291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month to the day after Max turns nineteen, she gets her second tattoo. She hasn’t decided if it’s going to be her last yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	each day with you is a choice (I'll make it every time)

A month to the day after Max turns nineteen, she gets her second tattoo. She hasn’t decided if it’s going to be her last yet.

The tattoo artist gives her a look when she sits down in the chair. Max doesn’t blame her- she’s wearing Chloe’s shirt, which means it smells like weed, like everything does when it comes out of Chloe’s closet after being in there too long.

Still, the artist doesn’t mention it, and moves the stencil into place on her wrist.

“Here, right?”

“There,” Max says.

When the tattoo gun comes out, Max looks away until Chloe tells her it’s put away. Even the sight of needles grows barbs in her stomach nowadays, but she finds if she doesn’t look at them, she can force down the bile.

Chloe holds her hand the whole way through, just like last time, and Max watches her watch the needle press ink into her skin.

As the needle buzzes, Max lifts her and Chloe’s joined hands to nudge their knuckles into Chloe’s ink sleeve. “How long did this take?”

“Way longer than this,” Chloe says, and then rests her chin on her own shoulder, considering. “I don’t know how many hours, but it took four sessions overall.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Chloe looks over to where Max is adamantly avoiding. “God, you’re such a hipster. An infinity symbol and a circle.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do too, but still.”

Max winces, starts chewing on her cheek to distract herself from the pain working its way into her wrist. When she squeezes Chloe’s hand, Chloe squeezes back harder.

“You good?”

“Doesn’t hurt as much as the first one,” Max says when it’s died down enough for her to stop biting her cheek.

“Ha,” Chloe says. “Fuck, definitely. Inside of the elbow probably wasn’t the best place for a first tattoo.”

“I’m the one that suggested the placing.”

“Yeah, well. You know fuck-all about tattoos.”

“Hey,” Max says, and then winces again. Chloe’s fingers dig into the back of her hand, tight-tight-tight, keeping her grounded.

Max breathes in and out, paper-thin and slow. “Keep talking?”

Even if almost everything else has changed, Chloe’s smile is the same as it was when they were twelve.

 

 

-

 

 

Max manages not to bump her wrist against anything until they get home, at which point her plastic-wrapped tattoo grazes the edge of the sink as she’s getting a glass of water.

She swears quietly. At Chloe’s questioning look, she says, “Bumped it on the sink.”

“Ow,” Chloe says, and clambers up on the couch. No matter where she is, Chloe never sits anywhere normally.

When Max sits down next to her, Chloe takes her arm and rotates it so she can see the tattoo under the plastic wrap. She touches the skin around it, her fingers feather-light. “This hurt?”

“No.”

“Cool.” Chloe traces around the circle with one hovering finger. “You gonna tell me what it means yet? Or do you need more time?”

Max’s chest twists for reasons she can’t identify.

“I mean, I’m all for you deciding to get impulse tattoos at 3 in the morning and waiting outside the tattoo place for hours until it opens,” Chloe continues. “But you had me a little freaked for a while there.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know,” Chloe says, but she won’t look away from her wrist. She’s still holding her arm. “I know you are. Hey, you haven’t had a panic attack for a whole month.”

“Mm.” Max looks down at her second tattoo. It’s a solid black circle spanning out to the edges of her wrist, cutting off before her palm starts. “It makes sense in my head. I don’t know how much sense it’ll make out loud.”

“Try me.”

Max eyes her steely gaze. Beside them, there’s half a couch free, because no matter how they start, they always seem to end up pressed together.

She takes a breath. “Do you remember last week when my History of Photography class ended early and I drove over to Greendale and sat in on your Philosophy class?”

Chloe nods. It’s been a couple of months since they enrolled in separate colleges- community college for Chloe, across town from the college Max is attending. _Max’s real live college_ , Chloe used to call it. Max hasn’t asked her why she doesn’t call it that anymore.

Max’s wrist still stings. She resists rubbing it. “Your professor was talking about the possibility of alternate universes.”

“Right,” Chloe says, her eyes going shuttered. Her hand tightens a bit around Max’s arm. She had held Max’s hand in the class, asked her in the middle of it if she wanted to leave and looked worried when Max said she was fine.

“Right,” Max echoes. She wets her lips. “And he talked about other- other timelines. And it got me thinking, because usually I try really hard not to think about it, but.”

“Max.”

“I didn’t rewind.”

“I know you didn’t. You wouldn’t.”

Max nods. “But I kept thinking about it. And last night I thought I should have something- something other than you, I mean- to remind me that I’m here. That I chose this timeline, this world. And that I accept the consequences. And that I better fucking stay here, ‘cause otherwise those consequences will start up again.”

Her next breath comes out shaky, so she stops until it’s steady. Then: “I choose this. I could change it, but I won’t. I never will. I’m right here, and I’m staying. And that’s- that’s what it means.”

Chloe is quiet for a long time after Max finishes. When Max looks up at her, she expects her to be looking at the circle on Max’s wrist, but she isn’t. She’s looking at Max.

“Okay,” Chloe says. She lets go of Max’s arm and takes her hand instead. “But you know you’re gonna have to make up some bullshit if other people ask.”

Max shrugs. “I’ll say I thought it was pretty.”

“It is,” Chloe says. She chins herself on Max’s shoulder, nudges her cheek with her nose. “But not as pretty as you, _lover_.”

“Oh my god,” Max says. “That was terrible.”

“Shut up, it was incredible,” Chloe says, and the tight atmosphere dissolves into smiles that get easier as they continue.

 

 

 

-

 

 

On Tuesday, Max heads into class. It’s an 8am one, and she’s still half a coffee away from being alert enough to take notes.

“Max! Hey, Max!”

Even with sleep tugging at her bones, her mouth moves into a grin as she turns around. Kate is jogging up to her, backpack in hand. She slings it over her shoulder as she stops in front of Max.

They hug, because it’s almost automatic now- they’ve been hugging each other hello and goodbye ever since the tornado. Since even before that, maybe.

“Hi, Kate.”

Kate burrows down into her scarf as they start to walk together, pulling it up to cover most of her face. Her nose is just as pink as the scarf. “Brrr! Aren’t you freezing in that?”

“I’m wearing a jacket.”

“It looks really light.” Kate puts an arm around her shoulder and rubs at Max’s arm. “Here, have some body warmth.”

Max laughs and leans into her. “Aw, thanks.”

“Anytime,” Kate says. She tucks hair out of her face. “You’re here early.”

“Yeah, it’s Tuesday.”

“Oh, Tuesday’s your 8am class. Sorry, I forgot.” She rests her head on Max’s shoulder.

They walk like that for a bit in comfortable silence. She and Kate have had a lot of those in the past several months, though it seems like longer. It feels like she’s known Kate for years, like huddling into her for body heat is the most natural thing in the world.

As they go into the main building, Kate lifts her head off of Max’s shoulder. “By the way, how’s Chloe been? And could you please tell her I’ll get her money by Friday?”

“You guys gotta stop having poker nights,” Max tells her. “Do you even like poker?”

Kate blinks at her. “I like spending time with you guys.”

“Well, you should stop using real money, at least.”

Kate hums. “Probably. Most of us _are_ broke college students. But you’ll tell her, right?”

“Of course,” Max says. “I’ll text her in class. Which is right there, tragically.”

“Aw, I bet you’ll have a great time,” Kate says, giving her one last squeeze before dropping her arm away from Max’s shoulders. “You’re the most talented person here!”

Max snorts. “That wasn’t true at Blackwell and it’s not true here. But thanks, Kate. Your support means a lot.”

Kate beams. She darts forward and Max turns her head for the obligatory cheek-kiss goodbye. “We should go for frozen yogurt after our lectures finish!”

“Sounds like a plan,” Max says. “Meet you on the main steps?”

“Definitely! See you there!”

Max looks over her shoulder as she walks away. Kate’s back is turned away from her, and like Max always does when Kate has her back to her, Max remembers Kate stepping off the roof at Blackwall.

It’s a knee-jerk reaction Max would rather do without- it barely phases her now, after months and months of looking at Kate’s back. But it’s still a shock, small as it is. Sometimes Max spends time with Kate and has to look away from her from the crush of memories of things that never happened.

On the roof, rewinding had been like injecting fire directly into her skull, every time, and she could only go about thirty seconds back every time. It had taken three tries for her to convince Kate to step into Max’s arms instead of into empty air.

One of those times, Max had bolted forwards to stop her and got to the lip of the roof just in time to see Kate’s head hit the concrete. It’s one of the most prominent of her memories-of-things-that-never-were. She’d rather forget it. She’d rather forget a lot of things.

 

 

-

 

 

At school she has Kate, but their schedules are so misaligned with each other they only get to see each other a few days a week.

So instead, Max has her classmates. She’d call them friends, despite being new ones: they study together and trade photography tips, they sometimes come around to Max’s or she goes around to theirs to complain about their teachers or their workload or how they’re going to die poor and alone after producing nothing but crappy photos for their entire lives.

And Max likes it, she really does- it’s more or less what she expected college to be like, and she’s learning a lot. But none of her classmates have been dragged through what she’s been through.

Max is pretty sure there’s an official support group for the people who used to live in Arcadia Bay, but she isn’t in it, though she’s sure she needs it the most.

She doesn’t have anything official. What she does have is movie nights and poker evenings, supermarket trips where they all buy things in bulk for their separate apartments. She skypes with Warren most nights and has cram sessions with Kate where they try to get fresh eyes on their work, she has ongoing snapchat conversations with Victoria and Alyssa and Dana and, weirdly enough, Frank.

But mainly, she has Chloe. She comes home to Chloe or Chloe comes home to her, depending on whose class finishes first.

Living with Chloe is both entirely the same and entirely different than how she thought it’d be when she was a kid. For instance, they still paper-scissors-rock over who has to do the dishes until one of them thinks they’ve been doing it far too much this week and it devolves into a wrestling match on the kitchen floor, punctured with threats that are too shot through with laughter to be taken seriously.

Chloe leaves her towels, her clothes, her food wrappers all over the place and only picks them up in what she dubs her ‘weekly trash run.’ Yet she gets irrationally angry when Max doesn’t change the toilet paper roll or ‘puts it around the wrong way,’ or when Max insists there’s no right way to put a toilet roll on.

They still wake up to watch the Saturday morning cartoons, unless they’re too exhausted or hungover from the night before.

On those mornings, they stay in bed until one of them gets hungry enough to make breakfast. When it’s Max, she makes overcooked eggs and perfectly done toast. When Chloe does it, she makes Hot Pockets or cup-a-noodles. Then one of them wakes the other up and they sit on the bed and try not to get crumbs on the sheets. Their feet tangle together as they do this, every time.

Now, the girlfriend thing, Max never expected as a kid. Present-Max wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

 

-

 

 

After choosing the cheapest option on the frozen-yoghurt menu- because they have an actual menu just for frozen yoghurts at the place down the street from their college- Max and Kate sit outside on the flimsy chairs and dig in with plastic spoons.

Kate is in the middle of explaining her latest homework assignment when she stops and gasps. “You got a new tattoo!”

Max makes a noise around her spoon. It’s pink and littered with tiny kittens to match the one Kate picked out when they were at the checkout. “Yeah,” she says after she swallows. “Do you like it?”

She angles her wrist so Kate can see it better.

“Ooooh,” Kate says. Her hand comes up and then hesitates. “It looks painful.”

“Yeah, probs don’t touch.”

“I won’t!” Kate drops her hand, still gazing. “It’s really pretty! Does it mean anything?”

Max tries not to remember Kate stepping off the roof, the sound her head had made when it hit the steps, the halo of blood that spilled out.

“No,” she says. “It’s just pretty.”

Kate nods, starts gushing about how she could never get a tattoo, not that she thinks people shouldn’t get tattoos, of course, but _personally_ she could never get one, and Max nods along and puts both her hands under the table.

She presses her thumb into the centre of the circle, light and then harder as Kate keeps talking. It doesn’t hurt- her thumb is an inch away from the inked circle all around.

 _I’m right here, right now. It was worth it_ , Max thinks, and presses.

 

 

-

 

 

When she gets home, she gets five minutes of skyping done before Chloe charges in, slamming the door.

 _That girl never does anything by half,_ Max thinks as Chloe snarls at the floor. “Something wrong?”

“Fucking- _David_ ,” Chloe spits. She doesn’t call him Step-Douche anymore, but ‘David’ can have venom in it if Chloe gets her mouth around it.

She doesn’t come to sit next to Max on the couch, who types ‘brb’ and then sends it to Warren. She sits back to watch Chloe pace.

“He’s so,” Chloe says, and clenches her fists at her sides. She stalks to the other side of the room again. “He’s just-”

“What’d he do?”

Chloe grits her teeth like she didn’t hear her. “One second he’s all supportive, like, yes, Chloe, go to community college, it’ll be good for you, and the next it’s all bullshit and he’s thinking of stopping the cheques-”

“He’s stopping the cheques? Chloe-”

“He said he’s thinking about it,” Chloe says. Her shoulders are tight and bunched and pissed. “God. What a- I actually thought-”

She whirls around, meeting Max’s gaze for the first time since walking in. “I actually thought he gave a shit, y’know? Y’know? And now-”

“He cares about you, Chloe.”

Chloe makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Sure, okay. How would you know, you’ve met him like five times. And he was a dick four out of those five times!”

The memory curls around Max’s skull. _Proof_ , it whispers. _Proof, proof-_

Another thing Max would prefer to forget.

“He cares about you,” Max repeats. She presses her thumb into the middle of her circle, continues, “When- in the Dark Room, I told him you were dead and he- he got really angry and choked up. He shot Mr. Jefferson for it.”

Chloe’s entire face twitches. She stops pacing and stares at Max for a full five seconds, then says, “Oh.”

Max sits, stiff and still. Her thumb bites into her wrist.

“When did- when was-”

The fight has all but left Chloe, though her shoulders are still wound tight.

“Another timeline,” Max says. “You remember when I stopped you going to the party? That’s what happened when you went.”

“Oh,” Chloe says again. This one is quieter. She bites her lip, worries at it with her teeth. “That’s- that-”

Max waits. Eventually Chloe lets out a sigh which is mostly a hiss. “Well, he should give a shit about me when I’m not dead, too. He should at least _try_ to show it.”

She turns away on ‘not dead.’ Max knows how strange it must be for her, the knowledge that she’s dead in so many other timelines out there, the knowledge that Max has seen Chloe dead a dozen times over.

Max gets up. “I’m gonna- make dinner,” she says.

“Yeah.” Chloe clears her throat. “I’ll, uh, help.”

They don’t talk about it for the rest of the night. Instead they discuss their favourite game show, and Warren’s new girlfriend in California, and Chloe’s weird classmate who hit on her all day and refused to understand that she had a girlfriend until she brought up a picture on a projector of Max and her kissing.

When they go to bed, Max thinks it’s over with. But then Chloe touches her wrist, right in the middle of the circle.

“Have I ever mentioned how awesome it is that we live in this timeline,” she says.

Max doesn’t tell her, _I think about those other timelines every day. Sometimes I think I’m in a different one just after I wake up. I keep going to bring something up to you or Kate or Warren but then I realize you won’t remember it because it didn’t happen in this timeline._

She doesn’t say any of it, because Chloe already knows. They’ve had these late-night talks before, when it’s dark enough to admit things into the small space between their bodies.

Max takes Chloe’s hand and squeezes. “You’ve mentioned it.”

“Well, it’s awesome.”

“It is,” Max says. “I’m glad, too.”

If Chloe notices that Max holds her a little tighter than usual that night, she doesn’t mention it.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Late in November, Victoria turns up.

At first they think her knocks are the kitchen pipes banging together, like they always do. But the knocks continue until Victoria says, “I know you’re there, I can SEE you guys.”

Max and Chloe look up to see Victoria shivering outside their sliding glass door, her arms crossed tightly. “ _Thank_ you,” she says when Max gets up and lets her in.

“Uh,” Max says. She closes the door behind Victoria. “Hi?”

On seeing her expression, Victoria rolls her eyes. “Ugh, you didn’t check your phone, did you?”

Max thinks back to her phone, which is charging on her dresser. “No.”

“I only called you a million times,” Victoria says as she walks into the lounge. Her nose wrinkles when she catches sight of the mess.

“Yeah, thanks for the warning,” Chloe says. Her mouth is full of reheated nachos and she doesn’t bother covering her mouth as she asks, “What, you need a place to crash or something, rich girl?”

“You wish,” Victoria says. She tugs her jacket closer around her and as she does, Max notes that something’s off. Her face, maybe, or the way she’s holding herself. It’s like she’s trying too hard to be casual. “Did you guys see the news?”

When they both say no, Victoria nods. It’s a short, choppy thing. “Mr. Jefferson’s trial is today.”

 

 

-

 

 

They get Victoria some cocoa and turn on the news, and Max thinks about Rachel’s funeral.

It was a week after the tornado wrecked Arcadia Bay, and several days after the authorities had dug Rachel up after an anonymous tip.

The funeral home was one of the only buildings that hadn’t been eviscerated, ironically. Rachel’s funeral was lumped in with everyone who had died in the tornado, because her parents had been told it cut the cost in half.

Most of Arcadia Bay showed up. Or, the people formerly-from Arcadia Bay.

Chloe had cried and pretended she didn’t as her mother rubbed her back.

Max held her hand through the entire service- Chloe grabbed it as they were getting out of the car and didn’t let go until they were back in the hall all the Arcadia refugees were staying in.

 _I wish I could have met you_ , Max remembers thinking, looking at the photo stacked up with so many others. It’s something she thinks every time her thoughts stray to the subject of Rachel.

Max snapchats Warren and Kate a picture of Victoria sitting on their couch. She captions it ‘!!!!!’ and then sends an additional text to Kate: _gonna call you_ , because Kate likes warning in advance.

Kate picks up before it rings a second time. “Oh my gosh! Is Victoria okay? What’s she doing at your place?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Max says, walking into the other room so she isn’t talking over the TV. “Uh. Mr. Jefferson’s trial is today. It’s on the news.”

Kate is silent for a few seconds. Then she asks, “Could I come over and watch it? Would Victoria mind?”

Max startles at that. “I’ll check- give me a second, okay, Kate?”

“Okay, Max.”

Max ducks her head back into the lounge. “Hey, guys. Are you okay with Kate coming over to watch with us?”

“Sure,” Chloe says through a mouthful of chips.

“Victoria?”

Victoria’s eyes dart down to the carpet. “Sure, okay. She can come.”

“Cool,” Max says. When she’s out of earshot, she brings the phone back to her ear. “Kate, you still there?”

“Yep.”

“You can come over.”

“Thank you so much- I’ll be over in half an hour. Will it still be on then?”

“I think so. It’s a long trial. He did- he did a lot of stuff.” Max swallows.

“Yes,” Kate says. She sounds steely. It suits her in an odd kind of way. “Yes, he certainly did.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

“Why aren’t you at the trial,” are Victoria’s first words when Kate steps into the lounge.

“Oh,” Kate says, brushing rain out of her hair. “They said they didn’t need to bother me anymore. They got my statements on tape- they made me talk for ages and ages, I’m sure there’s at least an hour of stuff on there.”

“Right,” Victoria says. Her mouth is drawn into a tiny frown which goes flat as Kate perches on the couch next to her. “Um.”

Kate shifts self-consciously until Chloe bats at her shoulder enough for Kate to shuffle so her back is against the couch.

“Blocking my view,” Chloe explains.

Their couch isn’t big enough for four people, so Max sits on the floor even when Kate and surprisingly, Victoria, offers to give her their seat.

“I’m good down here,” Max says. It’s not quite a lie- she’s not good down here, but she doubts she’d be good on the couch, either. Every time Mr. Jefferson’s face comes on the screen, she suddenly can’t remember which things happened in this timeline and has to sift through them in order to get them straight.

Chloe’s ankle is on the floor next to her, and she grips it tight. Chloe bumps her shin with her foot in solidarity, and puts both her hands into Max’s hair, stroking gently.

 

 

 

-

 

 

They’re expecting it when Max wakes up in the middle of a panic attack that night.

Chloe is awake in seconds, groggy and then laser-focused. She strokes Max’s hair away from her face, thumbs at the tears running down her cheeks. She curls both her arms around her and holds her tight, hooking her chin over Max’s shoulder to say the usual things in her ear- the date, the time, their address.

“Victoria’s sleeping on the couch,” Chloe says. Her breath is hot and muggy on Max’s face. “Kate went home and texted you when she got there safe, she snapchatted you a picture of her rabbit before she went to sleep, remember, you guys went to get him last week, Kate called him Mr. Snuffles and it stuck. We ate carrot sticks and chips and pretended not to notice how freaked out Victoria was the whole night. We- we flicked water from the sink on each other as we were brushing our teeth, you gargled and I called you gross-”

“I can’t remember what happened,” Max croaks, and Chloe goes still. “I know- I know what happened to me, but I keep forgetting which things happened to everyone else, what they remember-”

“I’ll tell you,” Chloe said quickly. “You don’t- after you got me not to go to the party, you don’t remember anything after that until we got to the lighthouse, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I-”

“Okay.” Chloe’s throat clicks. Max feels it against her shoulder. “You wanna hear what happened? It’s pretty boring up until the storm.”

“Tell me.”

“Okay,” Chloe says again.

It’s not until Chloe is near the end and Max is near sleep that Max notices Chloe is pressing a thumb into the centre of Max’s wrist, right in the middle of the circle.

“You’re here,” Max hears as she gets closer and closer to sleep. “You’re right here with me, right now. No-one’s going anywhere.”

“I didn’t save Nathan,” Max says. It’s fuzzy, sleep-slurred as it stumbles out of her mouth. “I couldn’t- I couldn’t save Rachel. Or all those people in Arcadia Bay, _God_ , Chloe-”

“You did the best you could, okay,” Chloe says. Her voice is shaky like it always is when someone brings Rachel up. “You did everything you could without making another big-ass tornado. You did so good, Max.”

She kisses Max’s shoulder, her cheek, her sweaty forehead.

“I don’t feel like I did good,” Max confesses.

Chloe breathes, and Max listens because she would wreck another town if it’d keep Chloe breathing. She could compose a symphony of Chloe’s soft breath on her face.

“No matter what you did, people would die anyway,” Chloe says. “You can’t keep twisting yourself inside-out about it. All your options sucked.”

Max nods, leans into Chloe. If she sits still enough, she can feel it when Chloe’s chest expands with her breath. She can feel Chloe’s pulse point thrumming where her hand is locked around Chloe’s, her fingers brushing her wrist.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When Victoria leaves the next day, off to wherever rich people go when they’re taking a year off, Max doesn’t expect to hear from her outside of their snapchat talks.

So she’s surprised when she gets woken up at midnight weeks later by her phone. As Chloe groans and buries her head under a pillow, Max gropes over their bedside table until she reaches her phone.

VICTORIA, says the blinking screen.

Max squints at the light and clicks ‘answer.’

“Hello?”

“I’m a horrible fucking person, Max.”

Max sits up. The grogginess is still there, but it’s fading as she realizes how choked up Victoria is. “Did something happen?”

Victoria’s laugh is half-sob. “Yeah, this whole year happened. Jesus fucking shit Christ. This doesn’t happen to people, why did it happen?”

Max slides out of bed, pads into the bathroom. She closes the door behind her. “Are you okay?”

“Do I sound okay?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s because I’m not fucking okay,” Victoria snaps. Then she sniffs. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Max says. She shivers- the tiles are freezing, and she’s in bare feet and sweatpants and one of Chloe’s band shirts. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Victoria is quiet for long enough Max thinks she’s hung up. Then she says, “I didn’t sleep with Mr. Jefferson, you know.”

Max didn’t know, but she had suspected the opposite. “I believe you.”

“I nearly did,” Victoria continued. “I was going to. But then that shitfest week went down and Kate happened and everything else happened and suddenly Mark was a serial killing paedophile! So that’s- that fucked that plan right in the ass.”

Max squirms. “I don’t think he was a- a paedophile. There was no signs of sexual assault on the- on the victims.”

“Yeah, well I call a 35 year old guy who flirts with his students and fucking drugs them and takes creepy fucking pictures of them a fucking paedophile, okay?”

“That’s fair.”

“Fucking right it’s fucking fair,” Victoria says. It doesn’t have any bite, wobbly to the point of near-crying. “Shit. _Shit_. I miss Nathan.”

She starts really crying then, sobbing down the line, all tight, hard breathing as Max wonders what the hell to say.

“That’s really fucked up, isn’t it,” Victoria says. “Missing him? I mean, he killed a girl. He helped Mr. Jefferson do all those things. He drugged Kate- didn’t he try to drug Chloe?”

“He did drug her.” Max’s fingers bunch in Chloe’s band shirt. “But Chloe’s a little more resistant to drugs than Kate was. She got away.”

“Oh,” Victoria says, and hiccups. “Good. Hope she- hope she kicked his ass.”

“I think she kicked him in the balls.”

A laugh, not entirely steady. “ _Good_. Fuck. Fuck, why do I miss him?”

“He was your best friend.”

“Yeah,” Victoria says. “Him and Mr. Jefferson, they were the ones I was closest to. They were the ones I actually told things to. And now they can’t find Nathan’s body and Mr. Jefferson’s the one who made it happen.”

Max says the only thing she can think of: “I’m so sorry, Victoria.”

“Yeah,” Victoria says again. She’s still crying, but less so now. “I bet you are.”

“You can call anytime.”

That gets her a pause. “Thanks, Max.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.” Victoria takes a ragged breath, then blows it out. “Shit. Okay. I’m going to try to sleep. Um. Thanks for- listening.”

“Anytime.”

After Victoria hangs up, Max climbs back into bed. Chloe immediately makes like an octopus and wraps her arms around her torso.

“Who wassit,” Chloe mumbles into her neck.

“Victoria.”

Chloe raises her head slightly. “What’d she want? It’s ass-o-clock in the morning.”

 “Someone to talk to, I guess.”

Chloe makes a noise into her skin, then asks, “She okay?”

“No. But she will be, I think.” Max turns in Chloe’s arms so they’re facing each other, and Chloe hums happily as Max kisses Chloe’s forehead.

“’s that for?”

“All of it.”

“Y’r weird.”

“You’re the weirdest,” Max says, and closes her eyes.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Max finds her diary from last year buried in the depths of her suitcase as she’s trying to find a book she’s attempting to convince herself she hasn’t lost.

She sifts through it for a couple of minutes- there, all the things that never happened, down on paper. And the things that did happen, too. She thinks she stopped writing in it after they got back from their road trip, and even the entries there are patchy at best.

She puts it in a box, puts the box in their bottom drawer, and labels it with the year. Then she takes out a notebook she was going to use to take notes and writes a summary of what happened that day- nothing exciting, just studying, having an hour-long yelled discussion with Warren about Star Wars vs Star Trek, eating Chinese with Chloe and attending most of her only class today.

 _I’m right here, right now,_ she thinks as she puts her new diary in the top drawer, next to the photos from the road trip. _It was worth it_.

Her hand drifts absentmindedly to her wrist. She touches the centre of the circle, and it’s a light touch- no longer a lifeline, instead a comforting reminder.

“Hey,” Chloe says as she comes in and dumps her bag on the floor. She walks right up and sprawls over the bed next to where Max is sitting, then hooks her thumb through one of Max’s belt loops. “You have your thinking face on. What’s that about.”

“Nothing,” Max says, and at Chloe’s look: “Good things, I promise.”

 _I’m okay right here, right now,_ Max thinks, watching the light filter through their crappy curtains to touch Chloe as she lies on their sheets. _I choose this, I choose you and this._

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


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